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Recently I read this four-word headline, “Waiting to Be Important,” and couldn’t get it out of my mind for the rest of the day. How often during this last crazy year that we’ve all survived have smart, successful people felt frustrated, inadequate and possibly even unimportant. And think of the consequences when any of us feel this way.
It depletes confidence, erodes credibility (remember people read our non-verbal communication before they pay attention to what we’re saying) and causes us to act out in a variety of ways. We need to feel important to someone, worthwhile for what we’re doing at work or on a volunteer basis or in some other aspect of our lives. And when we don’t, it seems to shut down our ability to be great employees, good friends or even loving family members.
Feeling important, of course, is not feeling pompous, arrogant or overly confident. It’s a feeling of worthiness, and without it none of us have the energy and passion needed to effectively navigate our lives.
Statistics often take me by surprise, and when I read one that said that companies lose up to $500 billion a year right now with disengaged employees, and individuals lose their energy and even their purpose when they feel blah and unengaged, I thought it would be interesting to create some strategies to help people stay fully engaged and flourish and, of course, to help them feel important in authentic ways.
It’s probably how I’m wired, but I love acronyms; it’s an easy way for me to learn and speak in concepts.
ACTION seemed like a great acronym for inspiration and engagement strategies, so it here goes
A – Attitude. I’m sure you’re thinking well of course, everyone knows it’s all about attitude. The point though is it’s more than just being aware of attitude, it’s an understanding that we are what we think and what we think about expands and we get more of it, good or bad. Thoughts enable neurons to fire together by strengthening existing synapses and forming new ones. They wire together. So, what we’re focusing on creates strong neural networks; they get more oxygen and become stronger. What we don’t focus on weakens. Remember the phrase “use it or lose it”? So, neurologically we know there is a compelling reason to pay attention to what we’re focusing on, and what we’re telling ourselves.
And in the telling, some of our beliefs have been around so long that they’re more like unquestionable truths rather than just habitual thoughts; they become icebergs. They are hidden so completely beneath the surface we’re hardly aware they’re only our beliefs and not necessarily the truth. Rooting out old negative beliefs and questioning their validity goes a long way toward helping us get in tune with what we want to be doing and unleashing our energies to make it happen.
C – Communicate appreciation to ourselves and others. This has been mentioned hundreds of times, yet it’s so easy to focus on all we’ve lost instead of what we’ve still got. I was teaching a group of ex-military folks a while back and when the discussion moved to handling stress and dealing effectively with disappointments, one man spoke up and said his motto for his troop had always been: “If nobody died today, it’s fixable.” I don’t know about you but I’ve gotten so caught up in some small disappointment or injustice, and if I just pause, remind myself nobody died today, it brings a smile to my face and I get over myself.
T – Think again! Also the title of a new book by Adam Grant, it’s a reminder to check our assumptions. Just because we’ve believed it or done it forever, is it the best way, the only way, or even the right way? And as we see more opportunities from questioning our assumptions, we can also take advice from psychologist Edith Grotberg who says if we want to energize ourselves and cultivate optimism, we need to remind ourselves of three things:
- We have support when we need it from the relationships we’ve built
- We have solved problems in the past and can communicate what we need
- We are survivors who have overcome and managed a lot in our lives
Then there are the founders of positive psychology who use a technique to help prepare soldiers to handle the effects of PTSD by teaching them the following:
- Pay attention to what went well today and why
- Imagine the best version of your future self
- Take 15 minutes to write a letter to one person you appreciate, and then don’t send it—the idea is to dwell on what you appreciate
I – Imagine and Innovate. Imagine what would happen if you did something opposite of how you’ve always done it, or combined it with another idea, or reversed it, or tried something a little crazy. It was Einstein who reminded us imagination is more powerful than knowledge, and now is the time to use it. While watching the morning news there was a story of a man who started videoing himself picking up trash in the street while singing to himself. It was his way of giving something back, and as he got thousands of hits on social media others got the same idea and also started picking up trash and getting followers.
Take responsibility for what you’re doing and how it’s received, meaning watch out for your expectations of how others will react. Sometimes when people don’t behave the way we think they should it is stressful and disappointing. I can’t tell you the number of times what I thought and what others thought collided. The more we change our expectations, the less stressed and more energized we’ll be.
N – Now. Knowledge without action is useless. We procrastinate because we’re too busy, unsure, or any number of reasons, but as we know, time is precious and habitually waiting for a better time tends to get us nowhere. We are coming out of an incredibly challenging time, and we’ve survived. It’s now up to us to choose how to become engaged and optimistic; it helps us realize we’re all making a difference and possibly even feeling a little important in the process.
We’ve learned a lot over the past year, probably much of which we’d rather not have to repeat. As for me, I would like to be fully engaged in all that I choose to do, and if possible, make it fun. I love the Dalai Lama’s quote: “Choose to be optimistic, it feels better!” I certainly plan to try!
